China's secret gambling problem

Gambling in China may be illegal, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

Gambling in China is illegal, but is common over the internet or behind closed doorsPhoto: Getty Images

By David Eimer in Shenyang

11:31AM GMT 09 Jan 2010

Ma Honggang was once a legend in the secretive, twilight world of China’s high-stakes gamblers.

Moving from city to city, he spent countless nights around card tables in the smoke-filled apartments that act as secret casinos in a country where gambling is illegal and regarded by the authorities as a serious social evil.

Now he has embarked on a different career: persuading China’s growing army of illegal gamblers to think again about what to many has become a destructive addiction.

“I’d play with criminals, although I don’t want to say what they did, as well as rich businessmen and officials,” said Mr Ma.

What made him unique was that he hardly ever lost. An accomplished card sharp, with the sleight of hand of a professional magician, Mr Ma can pick any card from a shuffled pack, roll dice to order, or deal a winning hand of mah-jong tiles.

Sometimes, he would wear customised contact lenses to identify the marked cards he had specially made for him, at a cost of 1,000 yuan (£90) a pack.

Even more remarkable, however, is that there was never a shortage of punters for Mr Ma to trick. For, despite the fact that gambling has been outlawed on the Chinese mainland since the Communist Party took power in 1949, today it is more widespread than ever before.

Rising incomes have combined with the advent of new ways to gamble, such as foreign internet betting websites, to devastating effect for a nation whose people have long been known for their love of a flutter.

There are just two officially sanctioned lotteries in China. But an estimated one trillion yuan (£900 million) is also wagered illegally each year in China – equal to the entire economic output of Beijing. It is a staggering figure for a country where 700 million people – more than half the population – live in rural areas with an average of just 4,700 yuan (£415) a year.

The gambling takes place in card and mah-jong schools on street corners, in underground casinos in the cities, through unofficial lotteries in the countryside and on hundreds of websites catering to internet gamblers.

Now China is beginning to face up to an awkward problem for its Communist leaders to admit: illegal gambling has spawned huge and increasing numbers of addicts.

“Based on international statistics for countries with developed gaming industries, two or three per cent of gamblers have a problem,” said Wang Xuehong, director of Peking University’s Centre for Lottery Studies, who has made a study of China’s problem gamblers.

“In China it’s more than that, because people are still not rational when it comes to gambling.”

Mr Ma knows that better than anyone. His biggest win was 780,000 yuan (£70,000) in one hour of cards and he is unabashed about deceiving the people who played with him, despite their losing huge sums.

“I never felt bad about cheating at cards because in my experience, all gambling is 90 per cent cheating,” he said. “I don’t know why more people don’t realise that. Even when I warn people, they don’t believe me – until I show people the tricks.”

Mr Ma has now given up gambling and has instead spent the last five months demonstrating to addicts just how easy it is for a skilled operator to rig a card, dice or mah-jong game, in an attempt to cure them of their desire to bet. Prompted by what he says was a realisation that gambling was destructive, in March he set up the Ma Honggang Anti-Gambling Centre in the north-eastern city of Shenyang, Liaoning Province.

“I didn’t find it hard to stop and because I gave up gambling, I can be a good example to others,” said Mr Ma, an unremarkable-looking man – until he has a pack of cards in his hands.

Now instead of fleecing punters, Ma offers them free sessions in which he demonstrates how luck or skill often has little to do with whether a gambler wins or loses.

His centre is both unconventional and unique because despite the huge numbers of problem gamblers in China, there is no officially-sanctioned treatment for them. Instead, Beijing prefers a more draconian approach, reflecting its belief that gambling is inextricably linked to corruption.

Last year, some 600,000 people were arrested for gambling, while anyone who admits publicly that they need help faces the prospect of being confined to a mental hospital. Unsurprisingly, most addicts prefer to stay in a private hell of debt and despair.

They come from every sector of society.

Until 2007, Yang Bin could have been a poster boy for the new middle class that has emerged in China. He ran a successful steel distribution firm in Wuhan in southern China and had an adoring wife and a newborn son. But then he started playing the Chinese version of blackjack.

“I think I’ve lost around 1.7 million yuan (£150,000) in the last two years,” he said. “The worst time was when I lost 200,000 yuan (£17,500) in one night.”

Now, his life is very different. “My wife has left me,” said the 32-year-old. “She took our son back to her mother’s house. I don’t have the cash flow to buy any more stocks for my business, so I’m losing a lot of orders.

“It took me seven years to save two million yuan (£176,000); now it’s almost all gone. You could say that my life has been ruined by gambling.”

After seeing Mr Ma on television in May, he decided to make contact in an effort to stop. “He showed me all the different ways you can cheat at cards,” said Mr Yang. “I couldn’t believe it actually. I began to think that I might have been cheated. I used to play with a regular group and a few of them always won, while I always lost.”

Mr Ma has no doubts about his effectiveness. “This is the best way to stop people gambling; it is better than being locked up by the police,” he said.

So far, he claims to have helped more than 700 addicts quit. Such is the lack of information available to problem gamblers in China that many, like Gao Qiang, were not even aware they were addicted.

“I was initially reluctant to come to see Mr Ma,” said Mr Gao, who has lost his clothes shop in Shenyang and is 80,000 yuan (£7,200) in debt from betting on mah-jong games. “I wanted to borrow more money to keep on playing. I thought if I was lucky I could win back what I lost. But my wife threatened me with a divorce and my relatives and friends wanted me to come too.

“I don’t think I’ll gamble again. Now I know now that it’s too hard for me to win.”

Most of China’s problem gamblers, though, don’t have a Mr Ma to help them.

While his one-man operation has the blessing of the local authorities, Wang Xuehong – an academic at Peking University – has been trying unsuccessfully for years to persuade the Beijing municipal government to let her open a gambling addiction centre.

She has been allowed to set up China’s first help line for problem gamblers, and despite a ban on advertising the telephone number her staff are overwhelmed by calls.

Yet they can only listen. “We can’t do anything to help them because we don’t have a treatment centre,” said Mrs Wang. “If people have a really serious problem, we ask the local government if they can be admitted to a mental hospital.”

There are booming casinos in Macao, the former Portuguese colony that neighbours Hong Kong and is the sole corner of China where gambling is allowed. Otherwise the official lotteries are the only legal outlet for a bet.

Set up in 1987, they raise 100 billion yuan (£90 million) a year in revenue for Beijing. But Mrs Wang thinks that figure is dwarfed by the money wagered illicitly. “I’d estimate that 10 times more is spent on illegal gambling,” she said.

She believes the government gains so much from the lottery that it won’t admit to, or tackle, China’s gambling crisis. “Many calls are from people addicted to buying lottery tickets,” said Mrs Wang. “These are people who are going bankrupt, who have been divorced by their partners, who want to commit suicide.

“Do you think the government wants to say, 'We’ve created a lot of trouble for society?’ So they close their eyes to the problem.”